Zipf’s law—another view

Zipf’s law—another view
Popescu, Ioan-Iovitz; Altmann, Gabriel; Köhler, Reinhard
2009-05-09 00:00:00
In many scientific disciplines phenomena are observed which are usually described using one of the various versions of the so-called Zipf’s Law. As no single formula could be found so far which would be able to sufficiently fit to all data more and more variants (modifications, ad-hoc formulas, derivations etc.) are created, each of which agrees quite well with some given data sets but fail with others. The present paper proposes a new approach to the problem, based on the assumption that every data set which displays a Zipf-like structure is composed of several system components. A corresponding model is presented and tested on data from 100 texts from 20 languages.
http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.pngQuality & QuantitySpringer Journalshttp://www.deepdyve.com/lp/springer-journals/zipf-s-law-another-view-Ui6xLfPFNc

Abstract

In many scientific disciplines phenomena are observed which are usually described using one of the various versions of the so-called Zipf’s Law. As no single formula could be found so far which would be able to sufficiently fit to all data more and more variants (modifications, ad-hoc formulas, derivations etc.) are created, each of which agrees quite well with some given data sets but fail with others. The present paper proposes a new approach to the problem, based on the assumption that every data set which displays a Zipf-like structure is composed of several system components. A corresponding model is presented and tested on data from 100 texts from 20 languages.

Journal

Quality & Quantity
– Springer Journals

Published: May 9, 2009

Recommended Articles

Loading...

References

How Nature Works. The Science of Self-Organized Criticality

Bak, P.

Quantitative Text Analysis

Chitashvili, R.J.; Baayen, R.H.

Two regions in the frequency of words and the origin of complex lexicons: Zipf’s law revisited